random phainon fic idea i was marinating over with some friends, but i genuinely think he would KILL it as a classic manhwa male lead in the isekai villainess/reincarnation/returning to the past/rofan genre.
like, reader suddenly reincarnates or isekais into a classic jrpg game they once played as the chilldhood friend and crush of the protag and hero, phainon. they freak tf out bc they remember in the og game phainon leaves them behind to save the world from an encroaching darkness and promised to come home, but never did and ends up marrying someone else. they're just kinda a forgotten, loose end type character who never gets to have a real happy ending.
reader does NOT want to end up like that ofc and decides to leave the village asap to study alchemy and distances themself from phainon asap, but for some reason, this makes phainon become strangely clingy. he follows them out of the village and won't leave them alone, and reader is trying to guide phainon through the events of the og game to ensure the world isn't destroyed while also trying to build a new career/life bc they don't want to be overly reliant on him.
phainon is supposed to be a charming, perfect hero-type, and he's appropriately devoted to reader. but he keeps acting more "out of character" the more reader rejects him, and they get the feeling there's more to this world than they realize...
the convoluted plot twist is, ofc, that reader IS actually the childhood friend and this is their og world. in the first timeline which they thought was just a game, they actually died and phainon kinda went off the rails and brought them back to life, but something goes wrong. in the second timeline, they get sent to the modern world by accident and their memories of everything that happened is scrambled, and they're isekaied into the game world/og world bc of phainon again lol. and in the current timeline, phainon actually has HIS memories, too, and that's why he's so :( that reader keeps avoiding him bc he went through all that to bring them back and they won't even talk to him!!
